


carrion

by timesicktrio



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: M/M, but what else is new, kepler and jacobi are on a mission and have bad communication skills, small desert town shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28443060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timesicktrio/pseuds/timesicktrio
Summary: i wrote all of this in one day and it shows but it’s ok bc i am Coping
Relationships: Daniel Jacobi/Warren Kepler
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	carrion

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote all of this in one day and it shows but it’s ok bc i am Coping

daniel is ninety percent sure warren is dead.

this doesn’t bother him at first, though. while he would be temporarily stranded in the quaint desert town of amethyst, he knew he could take a cab (or hitchhike, since he realizes that a small town like this might not have cabs), go to the nearest airport, book a flight, and fly back to florida. mr. cutter would probably be displeased about him abandoning his mission like this, but daniel would just have to remind him that _warren_ abandoned _him_ first. worst case scenario, daniel would be assigned to a new commanding officer and promptly sent back to arizona to complete the job, and he would never see warren kepler again.

but while the thought of never seeing him again _seemed_ appealing, the mental image was rather disconcerting. daniel imagines him slumped in some ditch in the desert, robbed of his belongings and being picked apart by vultures, and he realizes he isn’t so sure if he wants warren to be dead. missing maybe, but not dead.

however, as the hours drag on without any word from him, daniel becomes increasingly certain the latter may be the case.

ever since warren had left that morning (without any notice, daniel might add) he had occupied himself with small, meaningless tasks. he organized the airbnb. it’s a small house tucked inside a grimy, run-down excuse for a neighborhood, decorated with warm colors and century-old furniture. daniel figures it’s not a bad place to stay, but they were used to staying at places that were… less dusty, and more... ridiculously posh. (daniel promised himself he wouldn’t become a pretentious asshole when he first joined goddard, but come on. even the _couches_ have dirt on them.) the one thing that daniel did appreciate about staying there, though, was that it was spacious, and he and warren got separate rooms. usually, that wasn’t an issue— the two of them had spent numerous nights crammed into the same hotel room, or bed, even, despite tensions running high between them— but daniel was glad to get his space.

which, yes, is a little ironic now thay warren is dead and all, daniel thinks to himself.

when he finishes organizing their belongings and dusting clean every inch of the house, daniel ducks into to the kitchen and makes himself breakfast. he wasn’t a great cook— he wasn’t as hopeless as maxwell, but he was nowhere near as skilled as ex sous-chef warren kepler— but his breakfast quesadillas and cinnamon toast turn out pretty good. he sits at the breakfast bar, eats his food, and compliments himself on how good everything turned out. he gets the urge to show his plate to warren and brag about he’s gonna become the new chef during their missions, but… yeah.

(this is when daniel realizes he has been thinking a _hell_ of a lot about a man he had previously claimed to not care about.)

after he washes his dishes and cleans up the kitchen, daniel relocates himself to the front porch. it’s not a nice view— ramshackle homes with neglected front yards, and a nice, panoramic view of the open nothingness of the desert— but the weather isn’t bad. it was early november, which meant that it was finally breaking the lower nineties and was settling in a nice, warm seventy-five degrees. daniel picks up the porch a bit and sweeps some of the dirt off before settling in on a chair outside the door. he feels the crushed remnants of cigarettes under his feet, and wonders if they were left by the house’s previous inhabitant or if warren was smoking again. daniel kicks the butts off the porch and watches them tumble into the dirt below. if warren wasn’t dead, and if he had been smoking again, daniel was going to give him hell about that.

he was going to give him hell about a lot of things.

all morning— by the time he retires to the chair on the porch, it’s already noon, and he had been awake for three hours— he’d been thinking about a night from a few weeks ago, the scene replaying in his mind over and over again; they’re confined to a poky hotel room wedged in downtown new york, listening to the sounds of the city and the light drizzle against the window pane. in the bathroom, warren was helping tend to a nasty wound daniel had acquired during a mission-gone-sideways the night before. warren scolds him for being so reckless, but his touch is gentle, his expression concerned. daniel comments on the tenderness— he was surprised at how soft such scarred, martial hands could be— which prompts warren to pull him into a kiss.

it was nice, until warren pulled away and had the fucking _gall_ to say that _daniel_ had been unwise for pursuing him, and that neither of them had the availability for anything more.

fuck warren kepler, daniel thinks to himself. he actually couldn’t care less if he was laying in a ditch right now, being scavenged by coyotes or slow-cooked by the hot rays of the sun. his brains could be blown out in some back alley, and daniel wouldn’t even give a—

that’s when a large pick-up truck rounds the corner onto the street and pulls up outside the house. daniel watches as warren steps out of the passenger side, thanks whoever is driving, and waves innocently to daniel as he gathers something from the back of the truck. the truck eventually pulls away, leaving warren in the dirt road with a black duffle bag under one of his arms.

“miss me?” he says as he walks up, then, noting the cleanliness of the porch, adds, “wow, you must have been pretty bored, huh? looks nice.”

warren doesn’t wait for an answer before heading back inside, and daniel reluctantly tails him in. warren sets the bag down on the table and kicks off his shoes as daniel tries to formulate the middle ground between “i was worried about you” and “honestly, i couldn’t care less if you had died” in his head.

eventually, warren retires to the couch, and he settles on, “where were you?”

“business,” warren says, unmoving, in his usual, aggravatingly reticent fashion. “why? were you worried?”

“no,” daniel lies, “but you could have at least told me you were leaving, or who you were just with. it’s been hours.”

daniel refuses to sit beside him on the couch, so he pulls out a chair from the table. warren checks his watch, and hums in amusement.

“it’s only been four hours,” he says, “did you really miss me that much?”

daniel sighs and realizes he’s not going to win this conversation— and with warren, every conversation has a winner and a loser— so he kicks back in the chair, tries to shed the anger. “so what’s in that bag, anyway?” he asks. “something for the mission?”

“you could say that,” warren replies, and a smile creeping across his face makes daniel want to peek inside the bag more than anything. “i’ll show you later. but first, lunch?”

daniel wants to tell warren that he just ate, and also that he has no energy to deal with his shit today, but he can’t help but give in— especially when a free meal and an escape from this dusty house are involved.

“sure,” daniel replies, “but i pick the place.”

as it turns out, there are not many places to eat in town. amethyst, with its booming, prosperous population of exactly one-hundred thirteen, has exactly three places to eat. the first is an old barbecue place they first passed on their way into town, signified by a frankly grotesque cartoon pig participating in what daniel could only assume was cannibalism. it seemed tasty enough, but warren couldn’t stand barbecue for whatever reason, so it was immediately scratched off the list. (it’s barbecue, daniel would say, who the hell doesn’t like barbecue?, to which warren would reply why would anyone _like_ barbeque?). 

the next place was a small, family-owned burger joint sandwiched perfectly between a liquor store and a stripper bar. warren jokingly suggests that they go to the stripper bar for lunch, but daniel tells him he’d rather eat the dirt from the ground than watch truck drivers get off to country music and busty strippers. the stripper bar doesn’t seem so trashy, however, when they arrive at the diner to find a distastefully large confederate flag hanging in the window. not wanting to give a place like that their business, they unanimously agree to go with the third option instead, which is a mexican place called salazar’s just up the street. they both like mexican food— and have yet to see any symbols of blatant racism or homophobia since their arrival— so they feel confident in their decision as they head inside. upon entering, a young, curly-haired waitress quickly seats them at a table and delivers water and chips and salsa as an appetizer.

“you know,” warren says, running a chip through the dish of red salsa, “i used to have a dog called salazar.”

“you had a dog?” daniel asks. he can’t say he’s surprised, but he had never thought about warren owning any pets before. he’s pretty sure he’s never even seen warren _interact_ with an animal.

“yeah,” warren replies, a smile spreading across his face as he reminisces, “we had him way before i started working for goddard. he was this big, hairy mutt, the sweetest thing in the world. my mom named him after a family friend who passed not long before we got him from the pound.”

“huh.”

“what?” warren asks, interested. “i don’t seem like a dog person?”

“no,” daniel shakes his head, “i just haven’t heard you talk about your mom before.”

warren leans back. “likewise.”

“well, my mom had a pretty insignificant role in the shaping of the daniel jacobi you know today,” daniel sighs and stirs his water with his straw, “and i don’t like to talk about my family. a consequence of having shitty parents, i guess.”

“you know, i never said my parents were perfect.”

“oh,” daniel says, shaking his head and realizing how insensitive and self-pitying he probably sounded, “sorry.”

“it’s okay,” warren replies, and daniel is relieved to see he doesn’t seem at all offended by his comment. “a consequence of shitty parents, right?”

the waitress returns to the table to take their orders. daniel keeps it light and orders just a couple of tacos, but warren goes all out and orders a platter made for two. the waitress offers to take their menus before she leaves, too, but warren opts to keep one in case they want dessert. as if an entire platter of food wasn’t enough, daniel thinks to himself. how a man with such an appetite stayed in such perfect shape, he might never know.

“so what’s the plan?” daniel asks after she departs from the table. he figures that if they’re in town on business, they might as well talk business. “go in, guns blazing?”

“very funny,” warren dismisses his joke with a stern look, “but no. we’re after some very particular items, and we’ll need to know their whereabouts before we go killing anyone.”

“and these items are all the way out here because…?

“well, a man named ivan egonov worked for the company a long time ago,” warren explains. “he used to be pretty close with cutter, but after a falling out of sorts, eognov dropped off the face of earth. quit his job, erased his personal records, disappeared from cutter’s radar, but not after taking some of goddard’s premier research projects at the time. it was a pretty big deal at the time, but since those projects hadn’t resurfaced in numerous years, cutter figured it was a lost cause to keep searching for him. stopped all efforts to track him down.”

“but now cutter has information about where he’s hiding?” daniel suggests, and warren nods.

“exactly,” he says, “in a remote location a couple miles out from the beautiful town of amethyst, az. we don’t have an exact location, but there’s a number of different sources claiming that he’s got a place out in the desert, hidden from maps and gps tracking. tonight, under cover of darkness, we’re gonna find him, recover the research, and ensure that he doesn’t cause mr. cutter any more headaches.”

“if he isn’t causing much trouble, why go through the trouble of tracking him down?” daniel asks after a moment, mouth full of chips. he downs it with his water, wipes his face with a napkin. “like you said, it seems like a lost cause to put resources into that.”

“well, they were important projects,” warren shrugs in a way that makes daniel think that maybe _he_ doesn’t even know what those projects were. “and besides, i wouldn’t call two agents ‘a lot of resources’.”

 _i’d hardly call you just one of his agents,_ daniel wants to say, but he catches himself before he can speak. warren feeds on praise and approval like a leech, and daniel will be damned if he gives that to him now. instead, he asks, “is he dangerous?”

“probably not,” warren replies, “but you should never underestimate someone who’s involved in cutter’s inner circle. the twisted things you would have to do for him to trust you like that…”

he trails off, and daniel wonders if warren would consider himself part of marcus’s inner circle. marcus obviously played favorites with him, but daniel could never be sure just how close the two of them were. and if they were— if warren _was_ part of that inner circle he mentioned— what had he done to earn a place there? what had he done that was so twisted?

daniel realizes that he’d actually been _present_ for quite a few horrific things that he’s sure would’ve landed warren a place at marcus’s table, and figures maybe this egonov guy wasn’t so dangerous after all. maybe if daniel faced him alone, yeah— but with warren at his side? daniel had nothing to worry about.

as exhausting and infuriating as it was to spend so much time with warren, he did make daniel feel safe, and that counted for something.

eventually, the food arrives, and it’s pretty good. they aren’t the best tacos he’s ever had, but he figures the racist diner and the redneck strip club couldn’t have been much better. (the barbecue probably could’ve, but he still respects warren’s opinion, no matter how inexplicable it was.)

they finish eating quickly and without much conversation (nor dessert), and warren pays the check when the waitress brings it to them. daniel isn’t sure if he writes it off as a company expense or if it’s coming directly from his wallet, but either way, he knows that it’s completely covered. they both pitch in for a tip— its wildly generous, and daniel feels a pang of jealousy as he remembers the countless nights he spent waitering with hardly anything to show for it— and head out to the rental car they had taken from the airport in the city. it’s about one now, and the sun beating down prompts daniel to take his coat off and discard it in the backseat as they enter the car. 

“i can’t believe it’s november and i’m _hot,_ ” daniel says. he looks over at warren, who is still wearing his jacket. “how the hell are you not roasting right now?”

“when you spend one and a half years living in the american southwest, you get used to it,” he replies. “i think it’s beautiful this time of year.”

 _you lived in the southwest?_ daniel wants to ask, but he already knows what warren is going to say. of course he lived here. of course.

as warren pulls away from the parking lot and drives back to the house, daniel wonders what else he doesn’t know about the enigma of a man that was warren fucking kepler, and if they were ever going to talk about that night in new york again. 

he also wonders if he would’ve been better off halfway back to florida by now, and warren dead in a ditch somewhere. daniel figures he’ll just have to wait and see.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> hewwo thank u for reading i love each of u and GREATLY appreciate kudos/comments <3 <3


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